


say so

by cakecakecake



Series: teeter dance [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: 10 years later, Aged-Up Character(s), Banter, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Champion!Gloria, Childhood Friends, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Growing Up, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Professor!Hop, Rivals to Lovers, childhood crush, hop pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakecakecake/pseuds/cakecakecake
Summary: “i think i remember...i wanted so badly to kiss you.""why didn't you?"
Relationships: Hop/Yuuri | Gloria
Series: teeter dance [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808371
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	say so

**Author's Note:**

> i first drafted this back in december but after getting caught up in fe3h fic, i kinda let it rot in docs for a while and didn't touch it again until the isle of armor dropped LOL i've been infatuated with future fic concepts of this cast, esp professor hop. feed me, nintendy. i know you have the power. 
> 
> this is a canon-compliant post-game piece -- i'm not deeply into pokemon as a franchise so please forgive me if anything concerning the lore is off, lol. i've only ever played yellow as a literal child and sun&moon a few years ago. 
> 
> gloria and hop are 25 here, established in their professions. she left galar for wrok around age 20 and hop hasn't seen her since, but they stay in touch (kind of. they're bad at it.) it's been quite a few months since they last talked, and that's where we begin.

Hop bolts upright, choking for air. He tugs at his sweaty shirt, frantically looking about in a hazed panic. He’s in his room, at the lab -- at home, safe at home. It was just a dream. He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and heaves in a deep breath. Dubwool makes a fuss at the foot of the bed, glaring at him, disgruntled.

“Sorry, mate,” he says to his fluffy old friend. “Woke you up, didn’t I?” 

Dubwool bleats, huffing a harsh breath out his snout. He looks a bit miffed, but his droopy eyes fall shut again once Hop relaxes. His breathing calms, pulse slowing down as he forgets much of what startled him awake. He just knows he’s had the dream before -- same terrible imagery he couldn’t escape last time. Same disjointed fragments of some mortifying simulacra of the person he loves most. 

He can never remember how it starts, but he’s always running down a hallway lined with over-sized frames, housing blank portraits. He thinks he’s searching for one photograph in particular, but he can never find it, at least, not until he reaches the end of the hallway. This is always where it stops, or where he’s met with a frightening obscurity of her face. The oblong face of the Champion screams him awake, and he always wakes up sweating, terrified for only a moment before becoming overwhelmed with sadness.

He reaches absently for the bedside, looking for something that isn’t there.

Right. He doesn’t have any photos of Gloria in the lab. His mother has old ones back home in Postwick, but they’d be useless -- she doesn’t look like that anymore. 

She doesn’t like taking pictures much nowadays. Her RotoGram account is forty-percent scenery, fifty-percent her Pokemon, and _maybe_ ten-percent selfies. The camera loves her, but she doesn’t love it back, not like his brother. Leon jumps to get under the flashing bulbs, but Galar’s new champion freezes when they go off. She’ll still smile, but only in that carefully practised way her agent would teach her to.

Faking it only takes away so much of her beauty, though. It’s hard for a girl like Gloria to look anything remotely close to ugly, but in his recurring nightmares, something horrifying warps the way she looks. Nothing like he knows or remembers.

Maybe that’s why he’s having them, he wonders. Maybe he can’t remember her face anymore. Her real face, not the Champion’s face -- he knows that face as well as anyone does. All done up with high-end international products, then airbrushed and doctored to perfection. All to preserve the adolescent glow of a rising child star. 

It’s like she stopped aging once she won the crown. Her skin is clear and plasticine, not a blemish or wrinkle in sight, with no sign of any feeling at all behind the pearly white smile stretched wide for the press. She never was one to smile very much, when they were young. Before all this. It used to be a reward, something he’d had to have earned, and now no one is allowed to look at her without it. Thinking about it makes him feel hollow.

Groaning into a stretch, Hop shrugs his lab coat over his shoulders, dragging his feet past the walls of shelves to the spiraling staircase. The soft clicks of Dubwool’s hooves trail faithfully behind him -- cranky as he’s become in his age, he never leaves his side. He brushes against side tables and follows Hop into the kitchen, nervously bellowing out when a harsh knock hits the front door. Hop whirls around in a panic.

Knocks at this time of night weren’t uncommon, not whenever Sonia had a brilliant idea and no key to let herself into the research center ever since he took over -- but she’s at least always had the decency to ring him with a warning before coming over so late, and she hasn’t called. The knocking comes again, rythmic like a riddle, and maybe it’s stupid that he can tell, but it’s definitely not Sonia’s. It sounds like an old inside joke, or enough of one to make him second guess who could possibly be out on the porch. It can’t be --

Yamper whines in discontentment as Hop slides on his slippers down the hallway to flick on the security camera. The live feed is static and grainy, thanks to the weather, but he can make out the figure of someone relatively familiar. It’s not Sonia, not anyone he can recognize from the neighborhood -- the figure shifts closer to the lens and peeks into the camera, smiling. 

A smile he hasn’t seen in a good five years. 

“Gloria…?” He mutters to himself in disbelief. 

He must still be dreaming. 

There’s just no way, she can’t be here, in Wedgehurst -- he almost knocks over a bookshelf on his flight to the front door. She’s supposed to be overseas, on a ship right now promoting a new fashion line or touring for the next Galar Gym Challenge -- she would have said something. Called, or at least messaged him with a heads up. She can’t be right outside. She doesn’t even know he’s living here now. Logically, she can’t be here -- but when he opens the door, he watches her face light up like someone shone a stage light on her. 

“Gloria,” he croaks. Her dark eyes soften.

“Hi, Hop.”

He feels his face split into the widest grin. Lunging forward, he throws his arms around her, squeezing tightly like he’s afraid the vision of her will melt away if he doesn’t get a good grip. She yelps in surprise, her voice trailing off with delighted giggles as she fiercely hugs him back, burying her face in the crook of his neck. 

“Gloria,” he breathes. He clutches the back of her head and tangles his fingers in her hair, damp from the rain. “What’re you _doing_ out here, mate? It’s been ages…”

“I know,” she says, apologetically as she shivers -- her face is clammy, hair slightly wet. Her flimsy jacket has a few spots on her shoulders, and Hop wonders if maybe she stood out here a while, debating whether or not to rap on the door. “Mind if I pop in for a bit?”

“Right, yeah, yeah,” Hop agrees, slightly awkward. He pushes the door back open and she kicks off her boots before following him inside. “Sorry about the mess…”

“Don’t fuss, not like I’m someone important,” she teases him, winking as she pulls off her coat and he’s glad for the dim lighting to shadow his quickly reddening face.

“Fuck off, Champion,” he murmurs, earning a laugh out from her. They wander around in the dark to the kitchen and he flicks on the stove-light. “Tea?” 

“Coffee, if you’ve got it,” she says, drawing up a stool. 

“Oh, right,” his voice lilts down. Coffee, right. It was always coffee, not tea. His mom got an espresso machine just to make her lattes whenever she came round for brunch. How could he have already forgotten what she likes? 

She shifts on the stool, smiling absently like she doesn’t notice. Not that she ever really cared whether or not he remembered silly things like her food preferences, but he still feels like a disappointment. It’s such a stupid little thing too, so he’s disappointed for feeling disappointed on top of it. He coughs, rummaging around the cabinet for the Keurig cups he’s sure are still there, thanks Sonia.

“Thanks,” she murmurs. He grabs a mug from overhead -- a round one, shaped like a Wooloo -- and flashes a grin at her. 

“So. When the hell’d you get in?”

“Mm. ‘Bout an hour ago,” she answers, watching him fill the kettle for his Earl Grey. “Dropped my things off at Mum’s and came right here.”

“At ten at night?” he balks at her. “What if I were asleep?”

“Oh, come off it,” Gloria starts, leaning forward on her elbows as a weird, foreign glint flickers in her eyes. “I know you stay up late, Professor.” 

Hop stiffens. Maybe it’s just that he’s still drowsy, but he swears he hears a purr in her voice when she uses his title. If he hadn’t known better, he’d think that maybe (and this is a big maybe) she could be checking him out. Her eyes seem to linger in places he’s never caught her staring before, like the dip in his low v-neck, or just below the waistband of his too-tight yoga pants (geez, wearing these might prove to be a dangerous choice), but there’s no way. She can’t be _looking_ -looking at him, she’s Gloria, and Gloria would never look at him like that -- like the way she is now. With her brows arched and her pink lips curved into an impish grin. The tea kettle whistles and Hop nearly jolts a foot in the air. 

“You got me there,” he manages to say, forgetting for a moment how flustered he is. “But geez, mate, you must be tired. You could’ve just called in the morning.”

She looks a little guilty, shrugging as the brewer fills her mug. “I was supposed to meet Sonia, actually, but she wasn’t picking up, so…”

“Oh, you can tell _Sonia_ you’re coming, but not your best mate?” he teases her, passing her the mug and a bottle of creamer and she scoffs.

“Oh, don’t be that way! She asked for my help with a special research project she’s doing.” She averts her eyes, stirring her coffee. Her voice starts to waver. “I realized I haven’t taken any time off in a while, so -- I booked a trip. It was all really last minute, I’m sorry. I should’ve given you a heads up.”

“Special research project?” he knits his brows, suspicious. “She didn’t tell me about anything like that going on…”

“I don’t know much about it yet, but I figured she’d fill me in once I got here,” she goes on, nonchalant. She takes a short sip from her cup. “But she’s not here though, is she?”

“Nope, just me, sorry to disappoint,” he half-grins, and she giggles again, white-white teeth glinting in the dim light of the kitchen. 

“Disappoint? I’d say it’s quite the opposite.”

Hop swallows, his heart racing faster the longer he looks her way. If she’s wearing any makeup at all, he can’t tell -- there’s a tinge of purple under her eyes, but the whole of her face is dewy and clear, soft. Eyebrows perfectly plucked and arched, thick lashes longer than he remembers them being. Maybe they make extensions for those, too. Her hair is certainly a lot longer than it used to be, but at least it’s a familiar color -- dyed back to the rosy-brown hue it used to be. He always liked that color. It matched nicely with her lips. Her lips... 

She has to clear his throat for him to realize he’s staring. He fumbles with his tea, turning abruptly to the cabinet to reach for some honey to sweeten it. 

“If you’re trying to butter me up, it’s not gonna work, mate.”

“Shut up, I’m being sincere!” she laughs through it, but she means it, fidgeting in her chair. Her voice softens. He’s not facing her, but he knows her eyes haven’t left the back of his head. He squeezes honey into his cup. “I’ve really missed you. I think about you all the time.”

 _Then why don’t you ever call_ , he wants to ask, but an argument is the last thing he wants to start. He sighs, spoon chiming against the porcelain as he stirs up his drink. 

“Yeah, well. I’ve missed you too,” he makes himself smile, feeling it spread when she smiles back. It’s so easy. It was always that easy, wasn’t it? He takes a breath. “What’s kept you so busy the past few months? The last time we talked it was -- what, New Year’s Eve?”

Gloria sighs. She gets up on her feet.

“How about we migrate to the sofa, hm?”

***

“...so yeah, that’s about all. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, but, here I am.”

“Geez, mate. Even Leon never got up to that much as Champion,” Hop has to laugh, shifting his leg. His knee is touching her thigh and he wonders if she feels the same spark of electricity he’s feeling. He looks there, for a moment, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s still clutching her mug, on her second cup now. He had to refill her halfway through her recount of the crisis on the Isle of Armor. She’s hardly moved, not even when he purposefully sat back down a little closer to her after coming back from the kitchen. It makes him feel a little warmer. 

“Restored your faith in your career choice, have I?” she asks from over the rim of her cup.

“Mm, a bit,” he considers her. “All that socializing sounds exasperating, honestly -- even for someone like me. I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s a little hard, sometimes, but I’m used to it,” she shrugs, but frowns. “It’s the passing of time that gets to me. Weeks will go by without me even realizing.” 

That comes as less of a surprise now, having heard of all she’s done, where she’s been. Not that he didn’t believe she didn’t have the time -- of course, everyone has the time if they care, but. He’s not so sure, now. She’s always been a little more distant, much more introverted, easily distracted. He understands her radio silence a little better. Gloria hums into her cup. 

“It’s the only thing I hate. Everything else...I feel like I could do it forever.”

He lifts his brows. “Forever, eh? You ever get homesick?”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “I get Hop-sick.” Grinning, again with that weird sparkle in her eye. She leans over to set her mug on the coffee table. 

“What?!” He can’t hide his blush now, not in the lamplight. The den feels a little too hot, and the patter of rain against the bay window hits a little harder in his ears, unless that’s just his heartbeat picking up again. He laughs because he can’t think of anything else to do. It comes out more like a cough. “Stop pulling my leg, Glo, geez. When did you get to be so embarrassing?”

She’s a little pink in the face too, he realizes. She twirls a lock of hair around her forefinger -- an old nervous habit. “Sorry, I can’t help teasing you a bit. I don’t have anyone to mess around with the way I can with you.”

“No?” he asks, incredulous, and thinking on it for a second, he tests her. “Not even Marnie?”

Marnie. The curious girl from Spikemuth -- Hop’s opposite in a number of ways. Reserved and soft-spoken, she’d always been friendly, but whereas Hop wore his heart on his sleeve, Marnie was heavily guarded. He guessed that was the whole appeal for Gloria. They started dating way back before she took off for a tour in Johto, shortly after Gloria’s twentieth birthday -- around the last time he saw her in person. She’d been dating her ever since, at least, to his knowledge. 

Gloria stiffens, chewing on her inner cheek as she stumbles through her next sentence. “Ah, well -- not so much, really. I thought I’d mentioned it last time we talked, or you’d already heard...we broke up, ages ago.”

“Oh,” he breathes out, eyes wide as tea saucers. It could be that he’s got his rose-colored glasses on, but she doesn’t look all that upset about it. Her lips slant in that awkward way they do when she’s trying to fight back a smile. He has to make a more conscious effort to look sympathetic. “Sorry to hear that, mate.”

“We’re still friends, but,” she hesitates, shoulders lifting. “You know Marnie.”

He doesn’t, but he gives her a nod, a bitter feeling in his throat as he scratches the back of his neck. “What happened? If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she assures him. “It was just -- I don’t know, it was just me, I think. I don’t like the media knowing too much about my private life, and Marnie didn’t like being a secret. She didn’t like a lot of things. Didn’t really shock me when she said she wanted to end it.”

“I’m sorry, Gloria,” he says, he means it, and she smiles. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m in the same boat.”

“You and Bede split?” 

“Er, yeah, a long time ago,” he winces.

“Well, that certainly was short-lived!” She looks bemused, rightly so although he won’t come out and say it. Dating Bede really didn’t last very long -- they got together shortly after she and Marnie did, only to call it quits a year in. Both of them were trying to fill a void neither one could, both missing a girl who looked right past over their shoulders at another girl, who had her head on a lot straighter than either of them did. They kept it quiet enough that Hop could mull over his mistakes in peace, but so quiet that he supposes he’d forgotten all about telling Gloria they were finished years ago. 

“Is it awful to say I’m not all that surprised?”

“You would get a laugh out of it, wouldn’t you?” he nudges her, warmth blossoming in his chest when she giggles even more. “No, I don’t reckon it’s a wonder. We were too different.”

“I hope it wasn’t all bad though, was it?”

“‘Course not. He might’ve been a prick sometimes, but at least he was a good shag.”

Gloria curls a brow, like she doesn’t believe him. “Was he, now?”

“Not that I have anyone for comparison,” he says pointedly, watching the lines around her mouth slacken. “But yeah, he was. Better than my hand, at least.”

“I would hope so!” she laughs. “You know, I believe it. He was a good kisser.”

Hop chokes on air. “What? When did _you_ hook up with Bede?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it that,” she waves her hand, dismissive as she groans. “It was just a kiss, years ago -- during the Gym Challenge. He was my first, though.”

Hop nearly spits out his tea. Gurgling, he scrambles to rest the cup on the nook, whining with a sarcastic flourish of his hand. “I thought _I_ was your first?”

Gloria balks at him, half-laughing. “ _You_? When did I ever kiss you?”

“You really forgot!” he fakes offense. “It was right here on this sofa! We were doing that tour of the lab and our mums left us alone -- ”

And then she dissolves into giggles again, making the corners of his mouth stretch wide before shoving a throw pillow in his face. “Oh, Hop! We were like, seven!”

“So? It still happened, it counts,” he teases her, tossing the pillow back at her. She catches it before it can smack her.

“Oh, fuck off with your technicality rubbish!” she chides him, still grinning. Her cheeks bloom in fuchsia as she clutches the feather plush, catching his eye. Her voice falls quieter, eyes cast to the floor as she digs her nails into it. “I thought you meant the night on Route Nine, but...we didn’t actually kiss then.”

“Huh?” he sputters, blindsided. He actually has no idea what she’s talking about. “Night on Route Nine?”

“You don’t remember, hm?” she asks bashfully, avoiding his face, but she keeps smiling. “It’s alright, it was like, ten years ago.”

“Jog my memory,” he humbly asks her, leaning in just a bit closer, and to his relief, she doesn’t budge. 

“It was freezing, that night,” she starts. “We were on our way to Circhester, and there was that snowstorm…” 

“During the Challenge?” he guesses, and she nods. 

“Yeah. The snow wasn’t letting up, so I set up camp. I didn’t know where you were and I was worried.” 

“I must have gotten ahead a ways,” Hop says sheepishly, wishing he could think back, but he’s drawing a blank. She scrunches her nose at him. 

“You did. I tried calling, but you weren’t answering. I just laid there between Cinderace and Umbreon for hours until I heard a ruckus outside the tent.” 

“Was it a Beartic?” he teases her, and she slaps his thigh. 

“No, you dolt, it was you!” she scolds him. “I had to make a new bonfire for your sorry arse before you froze to death. Dubwool got poisoned and you didn’t have any antidote on you so you did that thing you do when you panic.”

“Ah, the ‘wander aimlessly until you show up to knock the sense back into me’ thing, right?” he drawls, unable to suppress a grin, and she rolls her eyes, playful. 

“Yep, but lucky for you I was stocked up, so we patched him up and got to talking...and we just sort of…”

“We...what?” He lowers his voice, leaning in closer. A lot closer. His knee is resting on her thigh again. Her arms brush his as she looks up at him, blinking her impossibly long lashes. Really now, extensions like that should be illegal. He’s had a hard enough time looking into her eyes as it was. The smile is gone from her face, but the blush is still there, a luminous, brilliant shade of magenta. 

“We cuddled,” she finally says, like it was an incredibly difficult thing to parse. She looks sheepish, chortling at her own moment of childishness. “Sorry, I don’t know why that’s so funny.” 

“We cuddled?” he repeats her, breathing out a chuckle himself, only because she’s laughing. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I mean, we used to all the time, when we were kids. But it was different then, that night. I don’t know. One moment you were laughing at something I said, and the next you were looking at me like…”

Hop remembers this part. The part when their faces are close enough together that he can smell the coffee on her breath. The part when the _thumpthumpthump_ of his heartbeat gets so loud he thinks she’ll hear it. When she smiles at him softly, like she’s waiting for something to happen. Her pulsebeat is visible in the hollow of her pretty throat. He’s making exactly the same face at her as he did that night, he must be, because she murmurs, hardly audible --

“Like that. You looked at me like that.” 

Her eyes are sparkling. Hop is a hair’s breadth from her lips. He reaches to tuck a stray hair behind her ear and she starts breathing harder. In the briefest, most courageous moment, he confesses, “I think I remember. I wanted so badly to kiss you."

"Why didn't you,” she whispers. Her voice is high and breathy and she’s shaking. He can hear her swallow hard.

 _Thumpthumpthump_ , his heart goes again. “I...I didn’t know you wanted me to.” 

She could say something, some cheeky comeback or witty joke about him being an absolute clod -- but she doesn’t. She just looks at him while they breathe in each other’s air, dangerously close until time seems to slow to a stop. 

He’s not sure who moves in first. Maybe it’s him, finally plucking up the courage to do the thing his thirteen-year-old self couldn’t, or maybe it’s her, patience wearing so thin it just finally snaps. He’ll argue that it was him later, he thinks. But now, their lips finally lock, slotting together like two pieces of a puzzle long forgotten, and Hop swears the world stops turning for it. 

Gloria moans. It’s a startled, airy noise from deep in her throat, and something about it makes Hop feel like he’s been kicked in the knees. He breathes out sharply through his nostrils, hands reaching to clutch her face as she draws him in, fingers wound in the lapels of the lab coat he’s miraculously still wearing. What could have been a slow, romantic first kiss quickly shifts to something rapid and desperate, hurried like they’re somehow running out of time -- like they both know they’ve got years upon years to make up for and only one night to do it. 

Her lips are velvet-soft, exactly as he imagined them to be. She tastes faintly of caramel and vanilla and the robust murkiness of the Alola blend he’d brewed for her, and each time she rolls her tongue over his, he feels the same jittery skips in his heart that he’d get by drinking a cup. His hands are shaking, unsure of where to settle as Gloria takes the lead, shifting to straddle him proper and oh, these sweatpants are definitely a dangerous mistake. He breaks the kiss only to mutter her name in a feverish whimper. 

“This alright?” she asks, kissing along his jaw. Her hands drift to slide under his shirt and he’s not sure his heart can handle another spike in speed. “Hop?”

“Gloria,” he struggles, throat going dry. He’s trembling, fingers floating to find the dip in her waist. 

“You alright?” she asks, pausing to meet his eyes. She looks just as dizzy as he feels, eyes cloudy as her chest rises and falls quickly. She chews on her lip, fiddling with the zipper on her hoodie, pulling it down to reveal the lacy under-something she’s got on beneath it. The straps are skinny and the neckline is so low that he realizes -- she’s not wearing a bra. Hop’s breath hitches. This is _so_ bad for his heart. 

“You’re not -- you didn’t wear a…”

“Very observant, Professor,” she mocks him, flipping her hair out of the way and smirking. Hop feels his guts churning into a tight coil. He’s trying so hard not to just stare at the peaks of her breasts through the silky, flimsy camisole, but she starts giggling. 

“You can touch me, you know,” she tells him, and he swallows. Hard. “I didn’t wear one on purpose.” 

“You knew we were gonna do this,” he marvels at her, eyes flickering to hers just for a moment before falling back to her chest. 

“Just hoping,” she confesses, breathy. Hop bites down on his bottom lip, watches his own hands travel upward, stopping just under the curve of her tits. 

“Are you sure I can -- ” he mutters, blushing furiously like he’s a kid again. She grabs his hands, planting them furiously atop her chest. His palms are hardly big enough to cover her completely. He sighs. So does she. 

She’s so soft. Hop gulps, brushing his thumbs over her nipples, sweaty against the cool silk. Gloria flushes, her neck and collarbone rose-red. 

“My heart’s racing,” she mutters shyly, like an apology. Hop chortles hoarsely.

“You should feel mine,” he says. “I think I’m gonna pass out.” 

“I’m not even naked, Hop,” she blunders, shaking on top of him as he just palms at her, experimentally. “What’ll you do when my clothes come off?” 

“Die, probably,” he jokes with her, and she laughs, until he presses his lips against her collarbone. Her skin is so hot, a little clammy from her temperature climbing. Sweat glistens along the sharp jut of bone there and he swipes his tongue over it. Gloria keens, clutching his coat so tightly he thinks she might tear it. Taking it off is long overdue now, so he shrugs it off his shoulders with her help. 

“Well you can’t die yet,” she teases. “There’s still so much I want to do with you…” 

“Oh yeah?” he says against her neck. He flicks his tongue against her earlobe and she moans again, a little louder. “Like what?” 

“Like kissing you more, for a start,” she purrs, lifting his chin to meet his lips again. Hop smiles into it, blood pumping at a frantic speed as her mouth envelopes his. He can hardly believe he’s gone so long without knowing how this tastes. 

Their lips parts again for a breath and Hop nudges her. “What else?” 

Gloria pulls away only to smile. “If I can stay the night, I can show you.”


End file.
